Hi,
if you conserve MEC+MAT... then you conserve MEC, which means
consciousness is a computational process (running on "real" hardware per
MAT) but it is a computational process hence the process cannot rely on
the entire universe because if it is then MEC should obviously be false
unless the entire universe is also a computational process which then
would render MAT useless. Don't you think ?
Regards,
Quentin
Le samedi 22 novembre 2008 à 11:54 +0000, Telmo Menezes a écrit :
> Bruno,
>
> Conserving MEC+MAT, one could argue that no isolation from the
> environment is possible, even while dreaming. Even if you put Alice in
> a sensory isolation tank, there is still the possibility that
> interactions with the entire environment are an essential part of the
> process that produces consciousness. For example, through quantum
> entanglement. In the limit, there is the possibility that the entire
> universe is necessary for her consciousness to arise, and the film
> experiment becomes impossible because you would have to film the
> entire sequence of states of the universe during her dream and play
> them back. Obviously, the same universe where the dream takes place
> cannot also contain the film (you get infinite recursion). I can't see
> a way out of this in a single universe. What do you think?
>
> Cheers,
> Telmo Menezes.
>
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >
> > MGA 2
> >
> >
> > The second step of the MGA, consists in making a change to MGA 1 so
> > that we don't have to introduce that unreasonable amount of cosmic
> > luck, or of apparent randomness. It shows the "lucky" aspect of the
> > coming information is not relevant. Jason thought on this sequel.
> >
> >
> > Let us consider again Alice, which, as you know as an artificial
> > brain, made of logic gates.
> > Now Alice is sleeping, and doing a dream---like Carroll's original
> > Alice.
> >
> > Today we know that a REM dream is a conscious experience, or better an
> > experience of consciousness, thanks to the work of Hearne Laberge,
> > Dement, etc.
> > Malcolm's theory of dream, where dream are not conscious, has been
> > properly refuted by Hearne and Laberge experiences. (All reference can
> > be found in the bibliography of my "long thesis". Ask me if you have
> > problem to find them.
> >
> > I am using a dream experience instead of an experience of awakeness
> > for having less technical problems and being shorter on the relevant
> > points. I let you do the change as an exercise if you want. If you
> > have understood UDA up to the sixth step, such change are easy to do.
> > To convince Brent Meeker, you will have to put the environment,
> > actually its digital functional part in the "generalized brain",
> > making the general setting much longer to describe. (If the part of
> > the environment needed for consciousness to proceed is not Turing
> > emulable, then you already negate MEC of course).
> >
> > The dream will facilitate the experience. It is known that in a REM
> > dream we are paralyzed (no outputs), we are cut out from the
> > environment: (no inputs, well not completely because you would not
> > hear the awakening clock, but let us not care about this, or do the
> > exercise above), ... and we are hallucinating: the dream is a natural
> > sort of video game. It shows that the brain is at least a "natural"
> > virtual reality generator. OK?
> >
> > Alice has already an artificial digital brain. This consists in a
> > boolean tridimensional graph with nodes being NOR gates, and vertex
> > being wires. For the MEC+MAT believer, the dream is produced by the
> > physical activity of the "circular digital information processing"
> > done by that boolean graph.
> >
> > With MEC, obviously all what matter is that the boolean graph
> > processes the right computation, and we don't have to take into
> > account the precise position of the gates in space. They are not
> > relevant for the computation (if things like that were relevant we
> > would already have said "no" to the doctor. So we can topologically
> > deform Alice boolean graph brain and project it on a plane so that no
> > gates overlap. Some wires will cross, but (exercise) the crossing of
> > the wires function can itself be implemented with NOR gates. (A
> > solution of that problem, posed by Dewdney, has been given in the
> > Scientific American Journal (and is displayed in "Conscience et
> > Mécanisme" with the reference).
> >
> > So Alice's brain can be made into a plane boolean graph.
> >
> > Also, a MEC+MAT believer should not insist on the electrical nature
> > of the communication by wires, nor on the electrical nature of the
> > processing of the information by the gates, so that we can use optical
> > information instead. Laser beams play the role of the wires, and some
> > destructive interference can be used for the NOR. The details are not
> > relevant, given that I am not presenting a realist experiment (below,
> > or later, if people harass me with too much engineering question, I
> > will propose a completely different representation of the same (with
> > respect to the relevance of the reasoning) situation, by using the
> > even less realist Ned Block Chinese People Computer: it can be used
> > for making clear no magic is used in what follows, with the price that
> > its overall implementation is very unrealist, given that the neurons
> > are the chinese willingly playing that role.
> >
> > So, now, we put Alice's brain, which has become a two dimensional
> > optical boolean graph, in between two planes of transparent solid
> > material, glass, and we add a sort of "clever" fluid cristal together
> > with the graph,in between the glass plates. The fluid cristal is
> > supposed to have the following peculiar property (which certainly is
> > hard to implement concretely but which is possible in principle). Each
> > time a beam of light trigs a line between two nodes, it trigs a laser
> > beam in the "good" direction between the two optical gates, with the
> > correct frequency-color (to keep right the functioning of the NOR).
> >
> > This works well, and we can let that brain work from time t1 to t2,
> > where Alice dreams specifically, for fixing the matter, that she is in
> > front of a mushroom, talking with a caterpillar who sits on the
> > Muschroom (all right?). We have beforehand save the instantaneous
> > state corresponding to the begining of that dream, so as to be able to
> > repeat that precise graph activity.
> >
> > Each time we allow the graph doing the computation corresponding to
> > the dream (which exists by MEC), the believer in MAT, who believes in
> > the physical supervenience thesis, has to admit Alice is conscious, in
> > the sense of having the experience of consciousness of her (non lucid)
> > dream: she feels herself talking with a caterpillar for example.
> >
> >
> > Now we film that active graph, with a high resolution camera.
> >
> > As you have most probably already guess, that film constitutes our
> > home made "lucky cosmic explosion" generator, corresponding to Alice's
> > dream experience.
> >
> > So let us suppose that poor Alice got, again, a not very good optical
> > plane graph, so that some (1 to many to all, again) NOR gates break
> > down, in that precise computation corresponding to her dream
> > experience. And let us project, in real time, with the correct
> > scaling, the movie we have made, on the graph, playing its role of a
> > repeatable lucky rays generator.
> >
> > If Alice remains conscious in MGA 1, through MEC and MAT, Alice
> > remains conscious in this setting too, all right?
> >
> > In the ALL gates broken case, we have really, *only a movie* of
> > Alice's brain activity. Does consciousness arise from the projection
> > of that movie?
> >
> > Should a believer in MEC+MAT believes that?
> >
> >
> > Bruno
> >
> > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> >
>
> >
--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
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Received on Sat Nov 22 2008 - 07:39:03 PST